Unconventional
by ArtsyChick
Summary: Molly Hooper's first encounter with Sherlock Holmes.


**A/N: **I always laugh and cringe a bit when Sherlock uses Molly's crush and his gorgeousness against her. I imagine he's been doing it since the moment they met... ;p Enjoy!

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><p>She didn't know what it was about him that drew her like a moth to a flickering fluorescent light. He wasn't conventional in any sense of the word, even in appearance. Tall, thin, and pale, he reminded her of a vampire when they had first met, especially because she had met him in the mortuary.<p>

Flipping through various charts on her clipboard, she about had a heart attack when she entered the morgue and saw a black-cloaked figure looming over one of the body bags on the table.

"Hey, you're not supposed to be in here!" she shouted when she caught her breath. Marching up to him, she reached out to grab his shoulder when a piece of paper was shoved in her face, blocking her vision. "What's this?" she spluttered, trying to make her eyes focus on the small print.

"My permission to be here," a deep voice, smoother than the softest velvet, intoned. "Signed by your employer, Dr. Wallace. You don't mind, do you?"

She was about to fervently protest that as a matter of fact she _did _mind and didn't like being talked to as if she were a child when she batted away the paper and saw the man's face for the first time. All biting retorts died in her throat and she was sorely tempted to reach out and touch him to make sure he was real. For she was sure she was gazing at perhaps one of the most beautiful men in creation.

Many of the men she worked with had soft, doughy faces. But not this man. His face was composed of sharp, jutting angles. His nose was as straight as the edge of a ruler, his lips shaped in a deep Cupid's bow before dipping outward in a natural pout, his eyes a cooler blue than ice crystals. They burned her cheeks like dry ice would as his eyebrows inclined in amusement.

"You're Molly Hooper, right?" he asked, suavely leaning against the table carrying the body as if they were at a pub and not surrounded by cadavers. "Dr. Wallace mentioned you but said nothing about how pretty you are."

Somewhere deep in the back of her mind, she knew he was manipulating her. That his words were almost as insincere as the slight smile passing over his full lips. But it was drowned out by the steady, rapid thumping of her heart against her ribcage. Her coworkers barely remembered her name, let alone bothered to compliment her on her appearance.

Ducking her head shyly, she nodded. "I'm Molly, yes."

"I know we've only just met, Molly, but I was hoping you could do me a tiny favor."

Oh _God_, the way her name rolled off his tongue… She would've given him the moon if he asked. "Sure, of course," she breathed.

"Could you perhaps wheel out your freshest corpse for me?" And his smile broadened and his eyes sparked, like ice reflecting sunlight. "I'd like to test a theory of mine. Could be instrumental in finding a vicious and immensely strong murderer."

But he had her at "corpse." Molly obligingly fetched the newest inmate, an older man named Carey, and pushed it out for the strangely enchanting young man, who was now wielding a long staff tipped with a barbed blade.

"What are you going to do?" she asked warily as the man hopped onto a stool, towering over the trolley with his staff.

"Just an experiment," he said gruffly, hoisting the staff high above his head before slamming it down into the corpse's chest with a loud cry. The blade sunk in a few inches before slipping out and clattering the ground. She had shrieked with the demonstration of violence and shrieked again as he tried once more to embed the weapon in the man's chest.

"What are you doing?" she gasped, the blade sliding out with a sickening squelch.

Jumping off the stool, he dusted off his coat and swabbed the blade with a rag on the counter. "Trying to determine the amount of strength it takes to impale a man with a harpoon," he explained curtly. "Do try to keep up."

He left her with the mess, didn't volunteer to help her clean or even thank her for her trouble. As he stripped off his gloves and carted the harpoon out the door, she called out to him. "Who are you? I've never seen you before."

The man had made it out the door, but he poked his head back through. "Sherlock Holmes," he replied with a wink. "Goodnight Molly."

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><p><strong>AN: **The harpoon experiment and the man Carey are from _The Adventure of Black Peter._


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